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Early on the morning of April 13, 1945, a heavy-set man rang the doorbell of the upper Connecticut Avenue apartment of the new President of the United States. Hugh Fulton had every reason to believe he would he the most powerful man in the Truman administration. After all, he had done a good job as staff director of the Truman Committee investigating military procurement and construction. Attorney General Robert H. Jackson had recommended him to Senator Truman, and the senator liked the fact that he was a take-charge guy. It did not hurt their relationship that Fulton loved to get up early, like Truman. They always got a head start on the day's planning before any of the rest of the staff arrived on Capitol Hill.
After breakfast, Fulton waited around with the Secret Service men until the new President was ready to drive downtown for his first full day in his new White House office. This was the best way to get in on the ground floor, before others pressed in to get the President's ear. Fulton squeezed his bulky frame into the President's automobile and shared the Boss's most intimate thoughts as they made their way down Connecticut Avenue. At the White House, Fulton joined Edward D. McKim and J. Leonard Reinsch for President Truman's first appointment in the Oval Office. McKim had been a close friend since their days together in Truman's World War I field artillery battery. Reinsch, an experienced radio adviser, working with the Democratic National Committee, had helped numerous Democratic speakers improve their radio performance.
Of the three men who felt they had the "inside track," McKim stayed only a few months as "chief administrative assistant," Reinsch remained a few days, and Fulton was not appointed at all. At his first news conference, on April 17, 1945, the President announced: "Mr. Reinsch is going to help me with press and radio affairs." The newsprint journalists raised a storm of jealous objection to having a radio man handle the press. Truman then decided to bring in his old school classmate, Charles G. Ross, as press secretary. At his second news conference, on April 20, 1945, the President read what sounded like a carefully contrived letter from the head of the Cox Broadcasting System, explaining the "tremendous tasks" that made it imperative for Reinsch to return to their employ. In subsequent years, Reinsch dispatched a number of analytical memoranda to the President, making suggestions on Truman's oratorical style, pronunciation, emphasis, and the dramatic qualities of the presidential addresses. There is little evidence that his advice was followed.
McKim, a forty-nine-year-old Omaha insurance executive, had been through the political wars with Truman since the early days. In 1922, when Truman first ran for county judge, McKim persuaded a local pilot to take Truman up to bombard a farmers' picnic with campaign pamphlets. Landing in a nearby pasture, the pilot nearly lost a future president as they wound up about three feet from a barbed-wire fence. McKim was on hand to accompany Truman on his cross-country vice-presidential campaign in 1944. And on the day Roosevelt died, McKim had everything in readiness at his suite at the Hotel Statler, waiting for the Vice-President to show up for a planned poker session. The new President, of course, had to call it off when the news of Roosevelt's death arrived.
Despite all this intimate background, McKim could not survive the pressure at the White House. He drew up several fancy charts showing White House lines of authority, only to discover that Truman preferred to hand out assignments informally rather than follow rigid administrative boxes on charts. Just two months after taking office, the President explained at a news conference that his old friend would be leaving the White House: "John Snyder put a draft on Ed McKim to get him away from me for a special job, and I guess I'll have to let him go for the time being." Truman hated to hurt an old friend, so hejust sent him over to work for another old Missouri friend-the federal loan administrator.
What happened to Fulton after his auspicious start on the Truman Committee, and his early-bird bid for glory on April 13? Truman was fond of quoting Woodrow Wilson on the effect that Washington, D.C., has on people: "Some people grow, while others simply swell up." There is little doubt that Margaret was accurately reflecting her father's views when she wrote:
Poor Mr. Fulton was suffering from what Dad calls "Potomac fever." Basically, this very common Washington disease involves delusions of grandeur and an itch for power and publicity. The news that my father had become President had aroused the virus in Mr. Fulton, in its most acute form. Dad soon learned from friends that Mr. Fulton was telling everyone in Washington that he was going to be the acting President--the implication being that Harry S. Truman did not have the talent to do the job. Although they parted amicably enough that morning, Mr. Fulton was never offered an official post in the White House.
Luck seems to play a big part in getting assigned to the White House staff. Still, one can make generalizations that apply in any administration. A president surrounds himself with people whom he trusts. They share his goals, or are flexible enough to embrace and enthusiastically support them. They are on the staff to help the president in his job, rather than grind personal axes for themselves. They should have a point of view broader than the executive departments and agencies or special interests. They must be able to see beyond the water's edge.
Every president--and Truman was no exception-appoints people from his home state whom he has known a long time. Thus he tries to insure there is mutual trust and loyalty between the president and staff members. Doing so does not always insure competence and ethical behavior. There is a tendency to keep and defend friends beyond the point of usefulness if they should get into difficulties. President Truman's deep-seated loyalty was an admirable trait during a difficult period when Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy was slandering innocent people--including members of Truman's White House staff. Opposition newspapers and columnists roused Truman's anger by what he considered unfair attacks on his friends. Indeed, the Kansas City Star and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (which he dubbed the "Post-Disgrace") had been misconstruing and twisting his actions long before he reached the presidency. These factors caused him to draw his wagons into a circle when his staff came under attack.
When a president succeeds to office after an election, he has advantages over a president who moves up from the vice-presidency after the death of a president. He has many weeks in which to choose his White House staff and cabinet members, and can make other appointments after thorough advance checks. Second, the new president's appointees have an opportunity to meet the president and their counterparts, get oriented and fully briefed by the people they are replacing, and move easily into their new assignments. Third, a president who has been elected has had an opportunity to test the administrative and political skills of numerous individuals during the heat of a campaign. Truman had none of these advantages, and was beset by other staffing handicaps peculiar to the situation produced by Franklin D. Roosevelt's death.
Unlike Lyndon B. Johnson, who had been thoroughly briefed on all major decisions made by President Kennedy, Truman had almost no opportunity to become oriented to the problems and challenges of the presidency. During the eighty-two days he served as vice-president, Truman saw Roosevelt only a few times, and the latter was out of the country at the Yalta Conference or vacationing at Warm Springs, Georgia, for much of the period. He could not help but recall that Roosevelt had opposed him in the 1940 Democratic senatorial primary. Roosevelt had even tried to appoint Truman to the Interstate Commerce Commission to clear the way for Roosevelt's favorite Senate candidate, Missouri Governor Lloyd Stark. As vice-president, Truman had been assigned the unpleasantly messy task of twisting Senate arms to obtain the confirmation of the politically unpopular former vice-president, Henry A. Wallace, as secretary of commerce. The assignment was disagreeable, but Truman's reaction might have improved had he detected any sign of subsequent gratitude by the ailing Roosevelt.
Although he believed that Roosevelt had a number of "crackpot liberals" with fixed ideologies in his administration, Truman was filled with admiration for Roosevelt as a national leader and pragmatic politician. He also had a deep, genuine loyalty to New Deal principles. He disapproved of some of Roosevelt's tactics, such as the heavy-handed pressure he used on Congress and the subtle, devious manner in which he supervised his cabinet and the executive branch. Thus it was with ambivalent feelings toward his predecessor that Truman built his White House staff and cabinet from Roosevelt holdovers, his old Senate staff, Missouri friends, and those who were available on short notice. However, Truman knew that he was serving out an unexpired term for which Roosevelt had been elected, and he was therefore determined to carry out Roosevelt's policies. In foreign policy, he welcomed the crash course provided by such men as Harry Hopkins, Averell Harriman and James F. Byrnes, which enabled him to carry on Roosevelt's policies within the framework of America'snational interest.
Truman tried to preserve continuity while winding up the war in Europe and the Far East and during the establishment of the United Nations. He told the Roosevelt White House staff and cabinet that they could stay as long as they wanted. This policy quickly changed. Some, like Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins and Agriculture Secretary Claude Wickard, departed quickly. A few more decibels of protest surrounded the forced resignations of Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr. and Attorney General Francis Biddle. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau was downright obnoxious. Author of the Morgenthau Plan to strip Germany of her industrial resources and reduce the nation to an economically crippled pastoral land, Morgenthau became very agitated when he was not included on Truman's list to attend the forthcoming Potsdam Conference. He stormed over to the White House to lay down the ultimatum that either he be included in the trip to Potsdam or he would resign. Truman's decision was made easier because he wanted to appoint Fred Vinson as secretary of the treasury, but he bluntly surprised Morgenthau by responding: "All right, if that is the way you feel, I'll accept your resignation right now."
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